Encryption is key to maintaining the confidentiality of data stored in electronic documents. As parties hold ever greater amounts of electronic data over longer periods of time, the value of those data to attackers increases, and the risk that a breach that exposes those data also increases. Although several methods of encryption currently exist, many of these methods rely on sharing keys over open channels and that all parties with whom the data are shared use good security practices to store the data. As the same data are shared between parties with various levels of security, the confidentiality of the data is only as good as the security of the party with the weakest security. Legacy systems, however, often require data to arrive in specific formats, and strong encryption can alter the format of data so that they are not compatible with a legacy system. It is often expensive or unfeasible to rework or replace these legacy systems, which can weaken the security of a party and expose confidential data to an increased risk of a harmful data breach.